Gender equality is fine, but I’d like to see the interviewer ask the CEO what she or he was doing specifically to reduce income inequality. Just once, I’d like to see a business reporter ask, “Currently, CEO compensation to the average salary of workers is 271:1; what are you doing to reduce that to 20:1, the average that prevailed in 1950, at the start of one the of the most significant growth periods in American business history?”
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When there is an existing model of creating diversity, especially at the top ranks, that is working that very few, if any, of these CEOs know about or even mention, including Sheryl Sandberg. That is the Rooney Rule used by the NFL to make the process of hiring fairer so that African Americans have a shot at these positons. It is not perfect, but it is the best system out there that is working.
It has allowed so many African Americans to first gain visibility and access and second, then over time head coaching and executive position.
It is not perfect but it is a better way to make the process fairer.
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You lost me when you said one of her clients was Halliburton. Doesn’t say anything good about her values.
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Accenture is a leech on businesses. They excel at extracting expertise from clients, repackaging it, and selling back to that client and others. Accenture has had their fingers in many outsourcing and offshoring projects. One of their core competencies is reducing American jobs. Companies like Accenture exist so that management of their clients don’t need to be accountable for anything. The world would be a better place if Accenture simply ceased to exist.
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This is a puff piece about the chief executive of a corporate consultancy. True gender equity in the office place requires more than collecting KPIs and must include policies like maternal and family leave. Yet these policies may actually affect real change in a way that is inconvenient for companies’ profit margin in the short term. A true warrior for gender equality would tackle these kinds of policies. Shame on the NYT for publishing what is little less than a corporate puff piece.
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Simplistic metrics make for easy headlines but reality is more critical than simplicity. It has taken CPA and legal firms about 40 years to ramp up diverse hiring by giving preference to minorities and women to reach 50/50 at some entry levels.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
It's hard to determine who is the best candidate for anything. It's easy when the metric is simple and irrelevant: who do you know, what's your race or sex, what school did you go to. As the article mentioned, it's easy to hire naively, foolishly, and make mistakes.
The squeeky wheel gets the grease, but its common for managers to not know what their team members do and who on their team excels at getting a good job done efficiently.
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The price of access to corporate leaders is self censorship. You get to ask them variations on How Great Are You? Instead of holding them accountable for the greed of executives, impoverishment of workers, tax avoidance, corruption of good government by lobbyists, antitrust violations and sundry other crimes and unethical actions such as fraud, pollution, forced arbitration, dark money, etc.
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Accenture's interview and background review process is immensely difficult to overcome. Hopefully Accenture will evolve one that is more responsive to the unusual paths many women's careers take. I knew a man who had a 18 month background review process with an offer on the table and a fairly linear work history in strategic tech consulting. Add age even with a consulting background and many qualified women will never make it to an offer. The one women I know who did make it into Accenture happened to be a very beautiful blonde without a lot of high end academic credentials and seemed to function as eye candy on certain accounts. The larger question is is the hire working to amass hours toward partner reward or evolve solutions for the client who is paying the big bucks? Could the client get better insight from smaller less pricey firms whose talent is a sharper, gender equality team driven, skilled, and less in a delivery silo?
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It is not ok to call anyone eye candy. It also diminishes your argument.
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@Janet Steddum The commentator was just describing a situation as they saw it and was not being judgmental or critical of the woman in question.
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The word "leadership" is over-used, and abused. Ms. Sweet's last paragraph exemplifies this - the behavior that she describes is much more aptly called "courage" or "candidness" or similar. For some reason, she feels compelled to use the word "leadership" (unless the article's author has somehow distorted her words).
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So, we can expect realistic audit “opinions” from this outfit now, as opposed to those of Arthur Andersen? What’s that? Check their Irish articles of incorporation for details? Yeah, right.
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Seems nobody wants to remember Andersen and Enron and all those other dynamic corporations
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@Cap’n Dan Mathews
They are not an accounting firm - so no - realistic audit opinions are not offered.
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They aren’t in the audit business, Captain Dan.
This is a very interesting article we want to share with our daughters and granddaughters. Many thanks indeed.
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This is an excellent article. We definitely need more empowering ones like this. Its fascinating to see that she tried hard to bring in gender equality in today's world where corporates for most part are run by men. Its always a tough struggle at the executive leadership for a women's say over the other gender. Its great to see women like her changing the paradigm.
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Thanks for this great article. We need more like it.
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Excellent interview. The challenge for firms like Accenture is simple: how do you create a work/life scenario (I'd never say balance!) that works for families. My wife and I met 20+ years ago at another (then) Big Six consulting firm. My wife left first because there were zero female role models who were successful, had children and had a family life. Literally zero. I left just before making partner because the "leave on Sunday, come home Friday night/Saturday morning" scenario is not what I wanted for my family. I loved the Firm, my work, and my colleagues. I didn't love the lifestyle.
I wish Ms. Sweet continued success.
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This sounds interesting!
Can we make one of the new rules that corporations stop with the ageist hiring policies. Any one much over 50 is denied even an interview. It’s not the resume. My job history and skills are excellent. From what I’m reading this especially applies to women.
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Absolutely true. Research shows older women are discriminated against more than older men. And the laws do not protect older workers of either gender. In communications and marketing, a pink collar area, roles for experienced professionals and even senior managers ask for a mere 7 years of experience to ensure they get a 30-35 year old woman who is easy on the eyes and costs less. More experience becomes a detriment for women, who end up laid off, locked out of the market, and poorer in old age.
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Strongly agree that older women are discriminated against — but it’s unfair to younger women to say they are hired because they are “easy on the eyes.” Younger women face plenty of discrimination, too — not least from those who assume they’ve been hired on the basis of looks. They’re not the problem. Treating our younger selves as the enemy is self-defeating.
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@Nancy T there is also the discrimination against women of child bearing age, so common there is a word for it, though I don't know what it is.
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In the spirit of "what you need to hear, not what you want to hear":
True parity will never be achieved in anything more than a cosmetic fashion if the thinking is that WOMEN must be promoted over an individual who is otherwise qualified, but male.
Instead of correcting the inequities of the past, and talking about it that way (which will one day be seen as just as blindly unfair), enlightened power would encourage all to aspire, and promote talent and vision wherever they find it.
It's a higher aim that will accomplish the present goal and, if you really believe in gender equality, will organically create a new and lasting model of leadership.
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Implicit in your statements that we should "promote talent and vision wherever [we] find it," is that management searches and considers equally acoss all potential candidates when promoting or hiring. Not true! The biases management have about women determine who even gets in the door for an interview or a promotion.
Also implicit in your statements, Allen, is that women, as a group, are not as well qualified within the pool of candidates for promotion. If instead we assume that women, as a group, are as equally qualified for promotion, then there is no reason to say that a policy of equality in promoting is "cosmetic," or a means to "correcting the inequities of the past."
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Allen, for my entire career, I have had to "prove" ability that was simply assumed to be a part of a male co-workers' skillset. Even when it was demonstrated that the male co-worker did not have my skills, I still had to struggle to show that what I do would be as good as what that male "might" be able to do. Over and over again.
What we need is some consideration that the actual value of the employee is considered rather than assuming one is better than the other based on gender, age, race... hence the idea of a quota.
Sometimes a quota has to be forced in order to re-arrange the thinking of the decision makers.
The idea is that eventually the pattern changes and the quota becomes unnecessary as the recognition of employee value becomes the driving criteria.
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@Margo
Thank you for your opinion, but it's all subjective.
If it's all a question of respect, do you think that when it's a mandated 50/50, your male colleagues won't be thinking that "she only got there because the HR department demanded 50/50?"
I am all for advancement- my personal hiring record proves it- but creating artificial goals will only hurt in the long-and short- run.
4
Thank you for this very interesting portrait of a super successful woman who I had never heard of. An ex-boyfriend was an associate at Cravath so I know a bit about the culture. Portraits like this, of strong, successful women, can help empower other women by showing them how they did it and that it can be done. So, kudos.
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